Monday, October 20, 2008

The Diamond charts for September 2008 are out today, and while I will have them here soon, I wanted to produce a supporting document to something mentioned in Michael Doran's Newsarama piece: whether Marvel's topping of 50% in the Final Pieces Sold Unit Share category represents a first in the post-bankruptcy era.

I don't often work with the unit share figure as when you're dealing with comics and trades mixed, dollars are more relevant — but as far back as the info at my fingertips goes, this appears to check out. Marvel topped 48% several times — hitting 48.96% in March 2005 — but never 50%. The below list shows the #1 Unit Sales Share publisher for each month, back to February 2003 when Diamond converted to Final Order reporting for everything.

I have the previous Unit Shares, but not electronically — again, they're not the most useful figure. But my guess would be that Marvel did not top the 50% level in the 1998-2002 period — it having many fewer trade paperback titles than DC in that time.

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